Berlin: Mercure Hotel Berlin an der Charite

I prepaid for this room through the Mercure web site. The rate was different for every night of our 5-night stay, but the average was €57 per night. My breakfast cost €13, but my daughter's was free.

Everything in the hotel looks clean and sparkling. As my daughter said, it's the expensive type of minimalism, rather than the cheap type. We saw several disabled people here, and I suspect they like the wide corridors and the modern elevators.

With the cheap prepaid rate, I hadn't been able to specify a room type, but we were given a twin as requested on check-in. Note that in many European hotel rooms, twin beds are affixed to each other. The beds were comfortable. We had one English channel, CNN, and the option of purchasing English-language movies. The room was on the small side. The bathroom had a modern shower with a proper shower door.

The breakfast was a delight. Many different types of rolls and toppings; hot cereal; a spread of cheeses, meats, and fish; bacon and eggs; and who knows what I am forgetting. I loved the lox. On the second to last day, a waiter came around and took our drinks order - I had not had that happen on other days - I had just gotten my own coffee.

My daughter was sick for the first two days of our stay, and this was certainly unfortunate, but she was happy to have a pleasant hotel room to spend the day in. The hotel has a restaurant with good, reasonably priced food - nothing extraordinary, but it was all nicely prepared. Again, this was a huge convenience with my daughter being ill. We both found the staff pleasant and helpful with our tourist questions, and they spoke English very well.

The hotel is one-half block from the Zinnowitzer Strasse U-Bahn stop, on Line 6, which is two stops north of Friedrichstrasse. There's a bus stop right in front to take you to the Zoo area. There is also a nearby tram stop, but I didn't try that. There are numerous great restaurant choices within a few blocks walk (or one U-Bahn stop) at Oranienburger Tor.

When I looked at the hotel site a few days before our stay, no room was available for less than €147 per night. So by prepaying, we got a real bargain.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.